CIMA - Cayman Islands Monetary Authority

Who is the CIMA?

The Cayman Islands Monetary Authority (CIMA) is the primary financial services regulator of the Cayman Islands. CIMA is responsible for managing the Cayman Islands currency, regulating and supervising financial services, providing assistance to overseas regulatory authorities, and giving advice to the Cayman Islands government on financial-services regulatory matters.

The Cayman Islands is known for its liberal laws and investor-friendly regulations that made it one of the most prominent tax havens in the world. It offers significant tax benefits, strong privacy laws, and a relaxed regulatory structure. Thus, it doesn’t come as a surprise that the majority of forex brokers in the Cayman Islands are enjoying a tax-free regime and relaxed regulatory guidelines. The upside is that they can offer much more flexible trading conditions compared to other brokers regulated in stricter jurisdictions.

Hence, from the perspective of the online FX/CFD industry, CIMA is not considered to be a regulatory authority in the same “weight class” as the FCA or Australia’s ASIC, its regulatory services are used by scores of brokerages.

How does the CIMA regulate a forex broker?

1. Safety of Client Funds：

A licensee shall separately account for the funds and property of each client and for the licensee’s own funds and property.

2. Requirement on Forex Brokers’ Reports：

Audit Reports; Net Capital Report; Anti-money laundering Reports.

How to check a broker is CIMA-regulated or not?

Generally speaking, CIMA-regulated broker profile will be found at the List of Securities Investment Business Licensees page on CIMA website. Try to find it and check if it will match the info from the broker website.

The detailed steps are as follow:

1. Find the name of the forex broker, which you can get from the broker’s website;

2. Enter the name into the search bar on https://www.cima.ky/search-entities-cima ;

3. And you’ll get the broker’s contents on CIMA website. At this time you need to check if the broker holds the license type of ‘Securities – Full’;

4. To check more license details of the broker, you can click the List of Securities Investment Business Licensees on https://www.cima.ky/securities-statistics ;

How to solve disputes with a CIMA-regulated broker?

When you have disputes with a CIMA-regulated broker, you can proceed the following ways:

1st way: The recommended way is to contact the broker directly and discuss with them to find a solution.

2nd way: If you’re not satisfied with the broker’s solution, try to contact CIMA in Cayman, which helps to solve the disputes between the forex broker and the investor.

You can either submit an online complaint form: https://www.cima.ky/complaints-procedure or send the complaint by post: P.O. Box 10052, Grand Cayman KY1-1001, Cayman Islands.

3rd way: If the 2 ways above can’t solve the dispute, the last way is to issue a case to the court in Cayman.